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"You need to know exactly who your reader is."
I said this to a group of people yesterday and I was emphatic, but this morning I am less so. Lots of questions have been chasing each other around my head overnight. Who ARE my readers? Do they change with each book? And if not, am I stuck writing for them and only them for all eternity? can I switch genre or age group whenever I wish? Is genre just something made up by marketing departments to make it easier to find what you want in a bookshop?
My emphatic statement about knowing your reader was directed at a group of students at a local school. I visit schools all the time and this one in particular has played host to my workshops more often than most (as well as having characters, like Hamlet above, painted all along the corridor of their English department!). But yesterday was different, because I got to spend 2 hours in the company of A Level students instead of my core readership of years 7 and 8.
I love years 7 and 8, d…